1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to equipment for making food items, and, more particularly, to pizza-making equipment, specifically to pizza sauce dispensers and methods of dispensing pizza sauce.
2. Description of Related Art
Commercial kitchens and restaurants face the challenge of making large quantities of food items while maintaining the individual quality of each item prepared. For example, in a pizza restaurant, hundreds of pizzas are made daily. Naturally, this volume requires manually repeating the same preparation tasks (e.g., rolling or otherwise preparing dough, spreading sauce, adding toppings, etc.) over and over again. Manually applying and spreading sauce, however, leads to variability in the amount of sauce applied as well as variability in the spreading pattern.
In other environments, such as a frozen pizza factory where thousands of pizzas are made daily, many of these repetitive tasks are automated. For example, a sauce dispenser is used to apply pizza sauce onto a pizza crust (e.g. unbaked dough flattened out to its desired shape and size). The dispenser deposits a predetermined amount (e.g. five ounces) of sauce onto the pizza crust. Such dispensers typically have a single sauce dispensing head and are sized to apply a single-sized portion of sauce. In other words, the dispensing head is capable of dispensing only a single volume of sauce, such as five ounces, rather than being capable of dispensing variable volumes, such as two ounces, three ounces, or even eight ounces of sauce.
While generally useful in a factory setting, these types of dispensers are not helpful in a restaurant setting where many different sized pizzas (e.g., ten inch, twelve inch, sixteen inch diameter) are made, each requiring a different amount of sauce. If these factory-type sauce dispensers were used in the restaurant setting, a food service operator would be forced to change the dispensing head each time a different sized pizza was made. This required changeover would defeat any intended gains in efficiency. Moreover, in the restaurant setting, there are several types of pizza with different types of dough and different types of sauce. Since different sauces typically have different viscosities, a different dispensing head likely would be necessary since the flow rate of the conventional dispensing heads is fixed.
While conventional sauce dispensing machines are capable of putting sauce on the pizza dough, the sauce still must be spread over the dough. In the factory setting, the typical conventional sauce dispenser drops a single dollop of sauce in the center of the dough and an automated roller rolls across the dough to spread the sauce about the surface of the dough. The roller frequently accumulates particulates from the sauce and dough, compromising the effectiveness of the roller and the appearance of the pizza. Moreover, a different roller is generally necessary for a different type sauce, to avoid cross-contamination of different sauces on the roller. Alternatively, in the retail restaurant setting, a food service operator spreads the sauce manually by hand, such as with a spoon or other cooking utensil.
In the retail pizza business, using a roller or spoon to spread the sauce is undesirable since manual pressure applied against the pizza dough can damage the dough. This effect is particularly noticeable for pan pizza dough, which is very delicate. Undue pressure on this dough pushes air out of the dough, causing it to flatten and possibly harden in the area of contact. Of course, this type of damage is noticeable by the consumer and therefore is undesirable.
Another conventional method of dispensing pizza sauce includes using a large multi-port dispensing head that sits over and above the pizza dough. Sauce drips through the ports, which are in a dot matrix or honeycomb pattern, down onto the dough. Unfortunately, selected portions of the multiple ports cannot be selectively deactivated, which would permit control over the pattern and volume of sauce applied to each pizza. Accordingly, this type of conventional, multi-port dispensing head is suitable only for saucing a single-sized pizza. A differently sized dispensing head or different machine would be required for each differently sized pizza. In addition, the ports tend to drip sauce even after the saucing operation is terminated, and the ports typically clog, thereby requiring frequent maintenance.
Accordingly, conventional methods of applying sauce to pizza crusts in the restaurant setting suffer from several disadvantages. First, manual application and spreading of the sauce leads to variability in the volume of sauce applied and can damage the crust. Second, dispensing sauce through a factory-type sauce dispenser is impractical, because the conventional dispensing heads permit dispensing only a single volume of sauce (e.g., six-ounce portions only) and do not assist in spreading the sauce. Moreover, the rollers available in the factory setting damage some delicate crusts while spreading and present contamination issues where different types of sauces are used. Consequently, conventional factory-type sauce dispensers do not provide the desired efficiencies in the retail restaurant setting, and current manual preparation techniques remain inefficient and lead to variable quality.
A pizza sauce dispenser, according to an embodiment of the invention, simultaneously dispenses and spreads a precisely controlled amount of sauce onto a pizza dough base without requiring a food service operator to manually handle the sauce or the dough during operation. According to one embodiment, the dispenser includes a selectively rotatable disc, an arm that selectively pivots over the disc, and a spraying mechanism for spraying sauce onto the disc (or a pizza dough base on the disc). The rotatable disc includes a surface adapted to receive a pizza pan with dough thereon, for example. A nozzle of the spraying mechanism is disposed on an end of the arm and selectively deposits sauce onto the dough. Sauce is supplied to the nozzle by the remainder of the spraying mechanism, including a pumping system and reservoir. A control mechanism coordinates activation and deactivation of the rotatable disc, the pivotable arm, and the nozzle, and/or one or more of the following: (1) a selected rate of disc rotation; (2) a selected rate and selected directional pivoting of dispensing arm; and (3) a selected rate of dispensing sauce through the nozzle.
To sauce a pizza dough base, a pizza dough/crust is placed on the disc, the disc is rotated and the dispensing arm can be pivoted simultaneously, so that the nozzle strikes a path from the outer edge of the dough to the center of the dough. While the arm is pivoting over the rotating dough (set on the disc), sauce is sprayed from the nozzle onto the dough, forming a spiral sauce pattern on the dough.
The rotatable disc preferably includes a surface having a plurality of nested, concentric rings that match pizzas of different diameters, to permit the disc to instantly accept different sized pizza pans and/or dough bases. In addition, the concentric ring pattern results in automatic centering of the pizza pan (and dough thereon) on the sauce dispenser.
The sauce dispensing system optionally includes a second spraying mechanism having a second nozzle, which also is mounted on the end of the pivoting arm, and a second pumping system with its own reservoir. This additional spraying mechanism permits instantaneous access to a second, different type of pizza sauce without requiring any changeover of the first spraying mechanism.
Accordingly, a pizza sauce dispenser, according to an embodiment of the invention, automatically applies and spreads sauce onto a pizza dough for many different sized pizzas and multiple sauces, without requiring complicated changeovers of a dispensing head or other equipment, and without a roller, as is generally required with conventional sauce dispensers. Moreover, the sauce dispenser alleviates time pressure and the variable quality associated with pizzas that are sauced manually by food service operators.